Charlie Kirk has a 3% chance of winning a Nobel Peace Prize right now according to Polymarket. He's climbed from 1% since Maduro was arrested.
It seems unlikely since Nobels aren't awarded posthumously.
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The issue there is time. The Nobel prizes will be announced in around 9 months. Buying a share of "No" would currently cost 98.2 cents, working out to a (basically) risk-free return of around 2.4%. Alternatively someone who wants a very low-risk investment product could just buy 1-year t-bills with a return of... ~3.5%. And that doesn't require messing around with buying crypto and the inherent risk of trusting Polymarket with your money.
Anything under 3%/year of time until decision is going to have pretty limited predictive value within that range. Anything starting above that range will end up hitting that floor rather than going to zero because of the difficulty of finding a counterparty.
Are t-bills accessible for anyone, especially loaded with crypto?
AFAIK there are coins that pay better (some give you exposure to t-bills).
Polymarket pays interest on those bets about the same as the risk free rate.
It doesn't, or where do you think those 3% are coming from?
While Polymarket does offer holding rewards interest, it looks like it doesn't for this particular market.
That doesn't mean there aren't other explanations. It could mean that No holders expect to incur an opportunity cost greater than the risk free rate. Combine that with how there's low liquidity (there's less than $300 on the book buying Yes, and at 2 cents or less), and so we could just be seeing the effect of random fish temporarily distorting the price. It could also mean that the risk of a smart contract failing is making it not worth the hassle for a market maker to come in at such a slim margin and low volume.
They're offering interest on roughly a dozen hand-picked markets, according to their documentation. (I wasn't aware of that, so I stand corrected on the general assertion that they never do.)
> That doesn't mean there aren't other explanations.
Why do you need other explanations, when the observed probability can be precisely and fully explained by opportunity cost?
I don't have to "need" other explanations in order for them to exist. The current price does happen to accurately reflect what the risk free rate would imply. But look at the graph history: it hovered around 1% for a large chunk of December.
How much volume on this bet? Let's ignore black swan events and say it's a guaranteed 3% return. On how much? $1? $10? $1m?
I'd weigh the accuracy by how much money is at stake...
Even then, a "perfect" prediction market need not be accurate, if people use it for hedging. If some low probability event is really bad for me, I may pay over odds (pushing the implied probability up) to get paid if it happens. The equilibrium probability may be efficient, reasonable and biased.
Nobel Peace Prizes are Peace Prizes as much as they are Nobel Prizes.
I'm not sure the same(any) rules apply.
They would be a better prize if the word ‘Peace’ was removed from the title.
It would make the likes of Kissinger getting it easier to understand.
Well, Nobel peace prizes aren't usually awarded to people calling for invasions of their home country either, or cheering for the extrajudicial double-tap killing of smugglers/random fishermen.
Who's to say a dead person can't have done the most to "promote peace conferences" as mentioned in Nobel's will? These days, I'd say dead people make a larger net contribution to peace than most politicians.
Normally they aren't, but maybe the US will take over Sweden and the Nobel Foundation and make it happen.
...only to find out they invaded the wrong country! (Nobel peace prizes are awarded in Oslo)
To be fair, it would bw totally on brand. They would not admit mistake tho declare it a success and award own nobel price.
Ooops. I thought something was off when I looked it up (headquarters of Nobel Foundation are in Sweden).
To be fair you’re not really providing a hard stance against the estimate. You say it is unlikely, and indeed the prediction is a 3% chance. That’s unlikely.